


endless time

by hollow_city



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Piano, Pre-Slash, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 02:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_city/pseuds/hollow_city
Summary: tim doesn't let just anyone hear him play. turns out, jason isn'tjust anyone.





	endless time

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this is the title of the song tim plays. (you should totally listen to it; it's beautiful). also, out of character, maybe? i don't know. this is a mess that i wrote at 3 am. maybe i'll fix it someday, preferably not at 3 am.

When Tim's fingers first touched the keys, he was only five years old. He was home alone, as per usual, and he was wandering the halls in search of something to keep himself busy. He knew he wasn't really supposed to go into certain rooms, so he stayed out of those. But one day, he came across a door he could've sworn wasn't there before. And he knew he probably shouldn't have gone in, but curiosity didn't always kill the cat, right?

He shuffled up to the door and even though he knew no one else was home, he still glanced over his shoulder just to make sure. After another moment of careful contemplation, he grabbed the doorknob and pushed the door open. The first thing he noticed the second the door was open was the smell of dust and the darkness inside. It took some slapping around the wall to find the light switch, and when he flicked it up, his eyes widened.

The room was mostly empty, just as regal as the rest of the house, and held nothing but one thing and one shelf. It was a piano; shiny ebony surface with pristine black and white keys and shimmering golden pedals. It was dusty as hell and the fallboard was down, but it was by far the most interesting thing Tim had seen in ages. And he wanted to see more of it.

He knew it was a piano; he'd seen a few people play before, but that didn't mean he knew anything about it. He was only five, anyway.

It took him a few tries to climb onto the bench and push the fallboard up, but when he finally did, he was sent into a coughing frenzy. The piano hadn't looked that dusty.

He took a moment to eye the shiny keys, before reaching forward and pressing his pointer finger down on middle C. He pushed it down too slow and no sound resonated, causing his eyebrows to furrow in a frown. He pressed it again, harder this time, and smiled just a little when the note rang through the room.

But then he frowned again. He didn't have to know how to play to know it was terribly out of tune. It may have had something to do with the inch of dust on the surface and the cobwebs in the room; he was willing to bet nobody had touched it in a very long time.

Tim's eyes finally left the keys to travel towards the shelf, where a myriad of worn books and folders sat. The spines were fraying and the colors were faded, but he slid off the bench and reached out to grab one anyway. Just his luck, he managed to grab the largest one and dropped it the second he slipped it off the shelf. Another cloud of dust flew up in front of him, sending him into another coughing fit. He waved his tiny hands in front of him before plopping down on the floor and pulling the book open. It was sheet music, all marked up and yellowed from use. He couldn't even begin to understand it, and the more he tried to read, the angrier he grew.

He closed the book with a huff and hefted it back towards its spot on the shelf. This time, he grabbed the smallest folder on the shelf. It wasn't as dusty, but it was even older and more worn. He brought it back to the piano and climbed up onto the bench, placing the folder on the stand. He had to pull his feet up under him in order to reach the folder again. Inside of this one was a few sheets of paper; a one-page song, a page filled with notes and a page with the keys of the piano drawn on it. Each sketched key held a letter and a note inside. It was a cheat-sheet for the notes of the piano.

Tim had never been so happy to see something in a long time.

He pushed the other pages aside and focused solely on the cheat-sheet. He went through the third and fourth octaves relentlessly, trying to make his tiny fingers work faster and harder than they could. The scale didn't sound quite right without the proper tuning, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

When he'd finally gotten down which letters matched which keys, he moved on to figuring out which notes matched which keys. He covered the letters on the cheat-sheet and grumbled under his breath as he tried to play each note properly.

Tim didn't know how long he spent in there just learning the notes, but when he finally emerged from the room sometime later, the sun no longer shined through the windows and the stars were out.

He wasn't surprised, and for once, he was happy.

The first song he learned was the one-page song he found in the folder.

It was a few days after, and his fingers were itching to get back to the keys. His parents were still absent, so he had plenty of time to go back to that room with the beautiful piano.

But what he found out when he went back was that playing the piano was not as easy as he originally thought. The song was not hard; it was simple rhythms with little to no variation in dynamics (not that he understood the latter, anyway), but he still found it difficult to piece the notes together to make them sound even a little bit like a song. It seemed that his hands didn't want to work together, and every note that didn't line up with the one below it threw him off.

Despite this, Tim didn't give up. He wanted to have something that made him worth something. Maybe if his parents came home and saw how good he was at this, they'd stay and listen to him. It was a stupid idea and it wouldn't work, he told himself. (He still tried anyway.)

After a few hours of relentless practicing, he was forced to stop, because his stomach wouldn't stop grumbling. He devoured a pitiful attempt at food (his parents had stopped hiring a nanny when he turned five; they felt he was old enough to take care of himself) and found himself back on that piano bench in no time at all.

It took some time, but eventually, that song fell together, and he played it perfectly. He taught himself how to read music, how to play the piano, how to write his own tiny pieces once in a while.

By the time he was nine, he could play just about anything he found on that shelf and he'd play it perfectly just a few days later.

But it didn't make his parents stay.

* * *

Tim doesn't let anyone hear him play. Save for Alfred, no one has ever heard him play. He doesn't like for other people to hear him because this one thing is his, and only his. It's his voice that no one else is allowed to hear.

So when Jason strolls through the front door on one of his rare nights off and hears the faint sound of a single piano key being hit, he's surprised. He almost forgot that thing was even there, considering no one ever played it. It was one of those rich person things; you have all of the expensive things and you don't lay a finger on any of them.

He kicks his muddy boots off, already able to picture Alfred's face if he saw him tracking through the house with those, and continues towards the study, where the normally untouched piano sits. He doesn't particularly care, but Dick isn't in Gotham at the moment, Bruce and Damian are supposed to be out patrolling, and he's pretty sure Tim is on Titans business.

His footsteps are silent as he opens the door and what he sees almost makes his jaw drop open.

The Replacement is seated on the piano bench with his shoulders hunched over the keys. For a brief second, Jason swears he can't breathe.

Tim's wearing nothing but sweatpants and has white bandages wrapped around his chest, shoulder, and back. His hair is wet and dripping onto his pale skin, which is already quivering like he's sitting in the middle of the Arctic. His hands rest on the keys, but they don't play anything besides that one note.

A solid A natural. Quietly. Over and over again.

Jason snaps himself out of his stupor and curses himself out inside his head. He doesn't want to interrupt Tim, for some reason, but he wants to see what he does. He knows what it's like being benched for an injury; there's only so much you're allowed (by Alfred) to do, and it can get boring fast. But he never thought this was one of the ways Tim entertains himself when he gets that way.

He doesn't say anything, and he moves just a little bit to the right so he can get a better view of the keys, and now he can see that, unlike the rest of his body, Tim's hands are completely steady. Each finger rests on a different key and only his right ring finger moves up and down, striking the same key over and over again.

For a second, Jason thinks the kid might be high on painkillers or maybe having some kind of existential crisis, but then something happens.

The single note rings out twice more, before jumping higher and then higher again. His left hand joins in, accompanying the higher notes with chords that rumble through the piano and echo through the room. Jason watches as Tim's fingers begin to dance across the keys quickly, and he makes it seem like it's the easiest thing he's ever done. Like it's easier than breathing.

And maybe it is. He might even kick his pride aside and ask him. But probably not.

For a moment, the song gets louder, only for it to peter down again a few measures later. It continues on like this, and Jason can't tear his eyes away. He had no idea Tim could play, he figured that it was only Damian who had any sort of musical talent. Then again, the kid will find a way to conquer anything you throw at him, so he doesn't really count.

He's snapped out of his thoughts when the song suddenly loses structure and Tim's hands fly back and forth out of their previous confines. Chords are split into sluggish arpeggios which are followed by frantic melodies played by his right hand. It's in the same key and time signature as the rest of the song, but at the same time, it's entirely different.

It takes Jason a moment to figure out what he's doing; he's improvising. And it's not because he's forgotten the rest of the song, because he hasn't.

A few moments later, the song folds back into the same structure and same melody that it started with. After a moment of following his hands, Jason figures out something else. The shaking in Tim's shoulders isn't because he's unsteady or he's cold, it's because he's crying. He's not making any noise, but every few notes, a droplet hits the keys.

And that just makes Jason uncomfortable. How the hell is he supposed to deal with the Replacement now? He's supposed to hate the kid, but here he is, admiring him like he's some kind of piece of art. And he's never been good at dealing with, you know, _emotions_ , so he's tempted to back out the way he came and never mention this to anyone.

But even so, he waits until the song slows to a quiet and smooth stop, and makes his hasty retreat. He traces his steps back to the front door and then heads for the kitchen, so it would seem he'd just walked in. He didn't bother with opening and closing the door again; he hadn't made any noise the first time anyway.

He almost bumps into Alfred as he steps into the kitchen in search of something to eat. Not because he's actually hungry, he's just searching for a distraction.

"Hey, Alfred," he mumbles, slipping around the butler and heading for the refrigerator.

"Good evening, Master Jason," Alfred replies, because a simple _hi_ isn't good enough, before tacking on, "Master Timothy rarely allows anyone to listen to him."

Jason stiffens immediately. Of course, Alfred knew.

"Really?" he asks, trying to feign disinterest.

Alfred's eyes twinkle with amusement, but his face remains as stoic as ever. "He takes great care to ensure no one will hear him. He must have changed his mind."

There's something he isn't saying, but he leaves the room before Jason can ask. He's left standing there with his eyes narrowed and his head bowed slightly.

He doesn't stay the night like he'd originally planned.

* * *

Jason isn't entirely convinced that he's gotten away unnoticed, but after Tim doesn't mention anything to him about it for two weeks, he's almost under the impression that he has.

And then he screws up. He's had the song stuck in his head since he heard it, but he doesn't know what the name of it is or if he'll ever get to hear Tim play it, so he can't get the melody correct in his head. He absentmindedly hums it as he works, as he patrols, testing out different ways it could go.

It's quite a sight; a vigilante beating the living hell out of a scumbag whilst humming a quiet piano solo.

It doesn't come back to the front of his mind until one night Tim swings by the roof Jason's watching the streets from as Red Robin and pauses just long enough to say something.

He pauses beside Jason, leans forward, and whispers, "its name is _Endless Time._ "

Just as quickly as he'd arrived, he was gone with nothing more than a flutter of a cape.

And Jason is left to stand there like a fool with his bright red cheeks hidden behind his bright red helmet.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, long story short: when i find a song that i really love i'll practice it every moment i get, and i've been hearing this song in my head for days because of it. it's concerning. so i decided to do something with it. this is what i decided to do with it.


End file.
